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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   16245 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 18, 2025

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Redistricting fight

It's been in the news that Trump is pushing for mid-decade redistricting. Yesterday, the Texas house approved a new map(https://www.texastribune.org/2025/08/20/texas-house-vote-congressional-map-redistricting-democrats-trump/) which nets the GOP five seats- while not a done deal de jure, in Texas politics when something the republican party wants passes the house, it's as good as done. Texas has only in-person filibustering(that is, a filibuster in the Senate needs to talk the entire time), so democrats can't delay the map for weeks in the upper chamber.

Separately, Gavin Newsom is pushing for redistricting California to gain more seats for democrats(https://apnews.com/article/california-texas-redistricting-congressional-map-4c22e21d5d4022d33a257045693b6fd4). One problem: California law doesn't allow the legislature to unilaterally do this. They need voter approval to override their independent redistricting commission. As gerrymandering tends to be unpopular with actual voters, their odds are a lot worse than Texas'. Other solidly blue states like Colorado have the same issue that they can't actually gerrymander on short notice due to their 'independent' redistricting commissions.

Trump is going beyond Texas as he tries to ensure Republicans maintain their House majority. He’s pushed Republican leaders in states such as Indiana and Missouri to pursue redistricting. Ohio Republicans were already revising their map before Texas moved. Democrats, meanwhile, are mulling reopening Maryland’s and New York’s maps.

The other problem for democrats in an all out gerrymandering war is that they simply have fewer seats to eek out. The most gerrymandered states in the union are all blue; red states going tit for tat isn't actually something they can escalate that much against. Combine it with red states not being dumb enough to establish independent redistricting commissions and it's pretty clear that democrats will lose in an all-out war of redistricting.

Wonderful. Another norm for the shredder. At least this time it’s closer to a tenuous gentleman’s agreement than settled law, right? Right?

From my perspective, gerrymandered districts are an insult to the idea of representative democracy. I hope CA fails in its shenanigans. I hope we Texans find a spine. Failing that, it would be nice if our leadership could pander to anyone other than Trump.

But I know how much those hopes are worth.

Gerrymandering as a term dates to 1812. Some gerrymanders are more egregious than others, but the practice is very hard to expunge. It’s also limited by the fact that the canvas these districts are painted on, and the political parties themselves, are ever-shifting. A gerrymander can only ever be a temporary success. If a party gets too strong, and too unrepresentative, people will successfully organize to take it down a notch. That’s how it’s always been.

I’d relax about this particular problem. Unless your specific qualm is that you’re a Democrat in Texas and are worried about being disenfranchised. In that case I fully understand your concern and would recommend you view it as a personal issue (and move states) or a local issue (and organize with state Democrats to undermine Republican rule by adopting a more Texan-palatable local platform). I wouldn’t think of this as the end of Democracy in America. It’s just the usual political grift. Unpleasant but sustainable.

I can buy the argument that the specific shape of a district matters less over time as people re-assort themselves. The corollary to this is that what does matter is the cycle-to-cycle changes in the districts. But on this basis, Texas' current actions are more likely to be a unilateral defection versus a tit-for-tat against previous democratic actions.

Also, if the district maps can be drawn at the whims of the legislature then the incumbent party can in general continuously redraw the map to maintain their advantage. This hurts your argument that everything will equalize eventually. The only way to prevent that is a norm that says "redistricting with the purposes of consolidating partisan advantage is bad". But your argument is the opposite of this.

My argument is effectively that trying to secure power in a democracy through anything other than pleasing the majority of constituents is eventually opposed to its own goal. If you can get away with pleasing your constituents less by virtue of a gerrymander, then they will come to distrust you. If they distrust you, your voterbase will erode out from under the gerrymander, and when the dam bursts you will be in real trouble. The one-party democratic systems, like in Singapore and Japan, are obsessed with pleasing the majority of constituents and use the opposition parties as ways to find areas where they are falling behind public opinion. That’s the heart of it.

Worried about? Ha. Ha ha.

Any plan which relies on our state Democrats is probably less effective than shooting myself. At least with that strategy, I’d reduce our share of the next census.

Gerrymandering every four years instead of every ten is obviously not the end of democracy. It’s just another thing made shittier to score a couple points in the here and now. You’d think I might be used to it by now.

State democrats are very effective at turning money into pointless drama, much moreso than shooting yourself.

If a party gets too strong, and too unrepresentative, people will successfully organize to take it down a notch.

Gerrymandering is sustainable in the sense it's not a catastrophic disruption to the function of government. It is still less than ideal. Safe seats lead to more important primaries which leads to more important primary voters. Primary voters skew radical, older, and more influenced by interests. It is poorly representative practice, but not in any positive "the King knows best" sort of way.

The pendulum is a comforting idea. It's also not an Iron Law of democracy. Political machines entrench themselves and last much longer than they should because people don't successfully organize to take them down a notch. Chicago has been poorly governed by a political machine for a long time. I consider competition closer to an Iron Law of Good in democracy, and gerrymandering reduces it.

That said, if we want to stop arguing about gerrymandering we need a new system. I'd choose a limited form of proportional representation for the house. Limit the number of parties represented with thresholds to preclude 1% parties. I don't know how other places do that, but pick whatever is the best I'm sure it's easy. Keep the senate as is to preserve the contract of the Union. Oh, I guess we have to start by killing all current representatives to not slow or obstruct the reform process. Tree of liberty, etc.

and organize with state Democrats to undermine Republican rule by adopting a more Texan-palatable local platform

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

I've heard less realistic jokes, but not many. Texas democrats exist to expend out of state donor money on various retarded bullshit, not to win elections.

Listen, man, Donald Trump the New York Democrat managed to convert the Republican Party (organization of “pretend to care about Christianity so we can deliver tax cuts for the rich”) into a bunch of bootlickers and imitators that are seriously if sometimes ineffectually trying to deliver the platform they were elected on. It’s patently possible to take advantage of deliberate sandbaggers and repurpose their organization to your own ends.

Not saying it’s easy, duh. But if it matters to you…

Yeah it's a problem as old as the republic and has a buncha good to go with the bad - making a minority district so the minority actually gets a representative instead of just getting diluted is a good thing. Or a bad thing?

...It's deeply complicated.

Yeah my understanding is that even in a lot of gerrymandered situations the boots on the ground for the party that's losing out would frequently rather have one ultra-secure seat to enable a 30 year tenure in the House versus 2 55-45 seats in which they've got competition coming both internally and from the other side. Plus more vulnerable to random macro upheavals.

There's a reason a bunch of the longest house tenures are Southern Democrats who essentially sit in Rotten boroughs.

There's a reason a bunch of the longest house tenures are Southern Democrats who essentially sit in Rotten boroughs.

A non-trivial number of these are effectively required to exist by the Civil Rights Act.

How does that work? I genuinely do not know.

I'm not the election law lawyer you're looking for, but in short I'd say "it's a mess". Longer: the law in question is Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, accompanied with a bunch of court precedents, of which the Gingles test. Per Wikipedia:

Under the Gingles test, plaintiffs must show the existence of three preconditions:

  1. The racial or language minority group "sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district";
  2. The minority group is "politically cohesive" (meaning its members tend to vote similarly); and
  3. The "majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it ... usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate."

There is some relevant more modern precedent, but that's the basic part. IMO it's not a good answer because it effectively dilutes the no-longer-majority votes that end up in that district (in largely the same ways, just reversed), and because putting too many minority voters in one district is "packing" which is also disallowed.

This is what happens when you don't have a constructive example of what should exist, just congressional and judicial legal wrist slapping saying "no, but not that".

ETA: Hopefully someone else can give a more complete answer.

Exactly! Is that enabling sclerotic politics? Is that perfect for enabling minority representation?

Shit I don't know but it is complicated and not a new political ethics problem caused by modern political division.

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